Board 8 > Final Fantasy Record Keeper Topic 54: Dual Awakenings-Awakening Harder

(+) Yeah! (+)

Aphmau is a girl FYI.

Nexus Kraken is Thursday, anyone gonna try to go for a day 1 win? I'm worried about both versions. Mage will be Edge, Garnet and Y'shtola with double moogle. As much as Y'shtola sucks she's all I have for a third lightning mage with two cap breaks and a LBO. And she can imperil with her Awakening. If double moogle can't make her work nothing will.two

Physical I have more to work with, Prompto chain/Awakening/sync, Queen awakening/sync/chain/LBO and Master with honed awakening. I also have Lightning sync/dyad and both awakenings but she seems to have a hard time bulky bosses recently and Queen is getting hero gear. On paper that looks like enough but that last 20% is so hard to deal with physical teams.

I'll probably try magic on day 1. Garnet with her chain, sync, and LBO, Vivi with sync and awakening, and Edge with sync and awakening will be my team for now (with two moogles or Cait+healer). If that's not enough I'm hoping to get more Garnet relics in fest, and maybe Ashe sync 2 (or select Shantotto's sync from the stamp select).

For physical I probably need to wait until Sunday when I can lens Prompto's chain. I have Shelke's chain and awakening but her damage is SO BAD. My DPS is probably Lightning and Delita. I'm not sure if I want to do the half priced banner... I think Queen's sync would be great (I have her awakening) but I'm not that interested in CoD/Shelke.

SSJSephirothGokuX123 posted...

Aphmau is a girl FYI.

Oh shit, my bad. Totally didn't know lol.

Ugh, died at 25% left in D550. Prishe got killed earlier, likely due to taking a high gravity hit with pain status. Shan and Ayame both had their AASB casts interrupted, and they were already under Sync. If I had gotten another heal or two, I would've been fine.

VII Gilgameshes down after lensing Aeriths crit SSB and USB2 (maybe not totally necessary, but Im gonna need them for the DB/DK anyway). I think I should be able to clear XII, and then have the dps for II, III, and XI if I lens a healer USB. I only have 2 BDL for IX and XV (with one of the IXs being Eiko) and 1.5 for Tactics so I dunno if I want to try the 550 Gregs for those (Im guessing 2BDL clears are doable but much less mindless).

Oh actually wait I lied, apparently I have Freyas AASB? Totally forgot about that!

XIII: 1/3: Cid Raines LMR3 (QC3 every three abilities)

I think that doesn't stack with Mog's AASB QC? If not probably pretty useless for me

The rule is that Quick Cast stacks unless _everything_ is identical. Quick Cast 3 will stack with High Quick Cast 3, or Quick Magic 3, or Quick Cast 2, or Quick Cast While [Condition=True]. So Raines LMR+ (QC3) and Mog AASB2 (QC for 15 seconds) will stack. On the other hand, consider Mog USB1 (party Atk/Mag/Mnd up and QC3); that's identical to the QC3 from Raines LMR+, so they'd just overwrite one another.

That said, Quick Cast does generally get less valuable as you stack it, since it's shaving off less and less time.

Ah right, I knew that like QC and HQC stacked, as did conditional and unconditional QC, but I forgot that different durations stacked. With the diminishing returns I'm not sure that it would be better than his 10% damage LM, though (also not sure whether Raines even makes the team for me for XIII)

If your FF13 team is mage based Raines is great if you have his awakenings and/or sync. And he gets Hero Gear next month!

Also this Fusoya/Rubicante banner is so tempting, Fusoya would be nice for Anima with imperils, and even though I already beat magic weak Snow Giant there's still FF8 Shiva in the future...

But I think I'd rather save for fest, I think I want Bartz's dual awakening the most right now.

My current XIII team is Lightning (S1, dyad), Snow (S1, A2), and Serah (S2) but I also have Raines' AASB1. Can't go full mage, though.

XII Gilgamesh done

Vaan is bonkers with just his AASB2 and HA; he was almost capping at rage 3 mid-chain with no critfix with just his own imperils. Did this one with one chain with just 3BDL.

Decided to try out Shadowsmith again

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/7/2/AAC7eiAACsxY.jpg

Chain ran out right at the end (the one major downside of the new wait mode is that the chain only lasts 14 seconds on speed 2...), but just barely managed to eke out the sub-30 anyway. I also lost some time from getting greedy and using Mogs USB1 so I didnt have the gauge to immediately counter the P3 full break, as well as not being able to immediately counter his res buff because Elarra needed to heal instead sometimes. (I guess some of the team isnt visible; it was Mog, Wedge, Elarra, Serafie, Biggs).

I also redid Zeromus and improved my time by almost 10 seconds, but still not sub-30 (41.5ish down to 32)

Doing 500 Gilgamesh reminded me how lacking my core team is when it comes to DPS. I should really do multiple pulls on that upcoming banner but I don't know how I can save more than 1 so I'll have to rely on realm tickets.

I pulled a stupid number of times (like four or five) on the last core banner so my Wedge is almost complete (sync, awakening, LBO) and I also have Biggs' AASB. On my previous attempts though I didn't have a third real dps (Tyro was faking it) and I had a lot less Elarra stuff. This time I added Serafie since I had her AASB so the team was pretty solid. It could have been even better if I had bought Biggs' and Serafie's very good HAs! (I really should have bought Biggs' since he's on my earth team, but I pulled off the win first try thanks to the new and improved wait mode).

XII: 1/3: Vayne LMR2 (dupe)

@_@

Batch awakening dupe, ugh.

Did one last manual labyrinth run for water and got three new 5%s, giving me 5/5/8 for Meia! I only got 5/5/8 for three characters, but everybody else is at either 4/5/8 or 5/4/8 so I ended up being pretty close for this set.

Got an 1800 login ticket

They do better drops yet?

I think they did update it recently

XI: 1/3: Zeid ADSB!

Finally something good! The only other stuff I have for him is his AOSB and G+, though.

Phew got him! Y'shtola came through!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/3/3/AADoKzAACtIN.jpg

Man this guy hits hard, thankfully I have Y'shtola's wall glint+ so I could use the healer RW to save my butt from sap kills.

Got Curillia sync off RoP, dang I was hoping that was Zied's sync for a sec.

Well if they did update it I didn't notice. Got a Beatrix Holy resist lowering lmr dupe. Oh well

Congrats on the day 1 Kraken kill.

I got Aphmau's Sync from RoP. She is now complete (except 2 of her LMRs) and she still sucks.

I also did the 25 mythril draw on the lightning banner.
4/11: CoD AASB2 2, Shelke AASB2, Shelke Dyad

CoD AASB2 is nice. Might not be that great for Lightning teams (great for dark though), but considering the quality of my magic lightning team I'll still take it.

I'm not sure how well Shelke does as a dps, but I now have both AASBs for her and the Dyad (which doesn't seem to give BDL) so maybe she can do some work.

CoD is actually one of the best lightning mages now if you combine her awakenings since dark & lighting is a diffrent mode from darkness and her new lighting/dark HA can be used like Squall and Lightning's awakening combo where it can triplecast with both awakenings are active.

Congrats on the win! I did one try and git him to ~28%. My Vivi died back around 50% though and he's my best DPS.

I wonder if I should try Y'shtola since I do have her Dyad, Sync, and Awakening (and LBO, but I already have Garnet's and Vivi's LBO so that's not much help). I could get farther if I keep Vivi alive, but I'm not sure if I really want to put in more work now or just wait for fest and see if I get more of Garnet's stuff.

My Y'shtola did like 80000 per hit with her LBO, though I used it in phase 2 to get rid of the orbs. I'd rather have her use it since her damage is poor otherwise compared to Garnet and Vivi.

Nice job!

Y'shtola only did like 30k per hit with her LBO for me on XIV DK (though she was geared more for MND)

SSJSephirothGokuX123 posted...

CoD is actually one of the best lightning mages now if you combine her awakenings since dark & lighting is a diffrent mode from darkness and her new lighting/dark HA can be used like Squall and Lightning's awakening combo where it can triplecast with both awakenings are active.

Oh, I didn't realize that.
I have her AASB1 so I could do that combo, but I'm worried because she'd be pretty much dead weight after those 15 seconds.

Took a shot at that 25 mythril banner also.

4/11: Shelke LMR+, CoD Sync2, Shelke Sync2 x 2

Well this could enlist CoD onto my magic lightning team potentially, though Shantotto and Ashe will be hard to top. Though it may let me use Shan as a chain user. Shelke............never thought of her as a damage dealer. She could definitely make a case for the physical lightning team.

X: 1/3: Auron G+

Back to junk

Hmm the only thing I have for any of the half price banner characters are Queen's LBO and CoD's wcast LMR. CoD stuff seems pretty appealing, but unless I got multiple BDL for Queen she wouldn't make any teams and Shelke stuff isn't appealing to me at all.

Wow, I actually did it!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/1/0/AAEagUAACtcK.jpg

Not sure if this should change my pulling plans for fest. But I still like Garnet and there's a second lightning Labyrinth coming pretty soon. I assume Blue Dragon is going to be tougher than Kraken?

Y'shtola can deal damage just fine with two moogles and a decent chain. Her dyad finisher was dealing around 13k per hit + 99k in phase 2. Vivi is still a powerhouse, I used his lit/ice awakening first, then when that expired I used fire awakening for trance + BDL, followed by sync 2. Some of his turns were hitting the 29k cap.

From what I've seen the Blue Dragon is actually easier than Kraken, he has some barrier gimmick that only really seems to boost his defense instead of orbs and mostly just does damage, no major status effects.

I did the Core/Beyond ROP because I'm so lacking in that department, got Wedge's sync. I figured it was time to finally beat Shadowsmith so I did that - took two tries, had to kind of learn the fight the first time, then beat him the second time. Tyro's awakening made Wedge switch from magic to physical damage so I had to move him into the front row for the second attempt. My time was 32.50 but I'll wait before trying for the sub 30.

Now I feel like I should try Sandworm, although I had been planning to get more stuff for Fujin in fest.

Another Labyrinth down!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/0/5/AAEagUAACtol.jpg

Physical Kraken down! Wow... that was somewhat easy! Didn't think I'd say that about a physical vulnerable Nexus boss pre Dual Awakening era.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/6/6/AADoKzAACtpi.jpg

Queen is a beast with Hero Gear, sheesh! She was keeping up with Master's DPS with her sync.

Nice job to you both!

Shadowsmith actually seems to want you to go physical between the silence, periodic RES buff, and having nonnegligibly higher RES than DEF. I still had Wedge go magical anyway though since I was using Mog instead of Tyro!

Also shit, you just made me realIze that I should have had Wedge in the front row for my Lab team since the occasional attack buff switches him to doing physical... whoops

Thanks, it's nice that Kraken was a breather this time. Hopefully Anima won't be too bad either since I'm pretty stacked in both physical and magical holy.

Just need Bartz's Dual Awakening from the fest and I hopefully I can clean up Snow Giant and Salamander and wrap up the Nexus bosses, well Abductor too but maybe Bartz can work there too?

My magical holy has 5BDL, but I have no chain and inadequate MND buffs

Both Hope and Edward's chains are lensable. Hope is the better choice if you have a cap break for him.

I have nothing for either unfortunately!

Edward's Ultras and Super are still decent, the main issue with him though is that it's hard to slot him in when bosses have so much HP that you need 3 DPSs most of the time, and Edward can't heal like Mog/CS/Orran. Which is why most people favor Hope now.

Yeah Id probably get Hopes if I did lens one, but Ill probably prioritize my other missing chains if I can get them for characters with BDL. Right now though Im hoarding my level 4 lenses since I dont see any teams that are clearly one chain or AASB away from a new win.

Shadowsmith's silence is just a minor annoyance since Tyro has that glint that can get rid of it, and he also has astra on his USB1. And now Bonds of Historia II can block it as well.

I guess I put up the chain too early for the astra to work since it still got my characters. Mogs chase got rid of it before it mattered, though

Yeah, when I did it I used Tyro's glint for the first one. I think my second chain blocked the second one.

Ah yeah I only saw one so I guess the second chain did block the other. Wedges default SB is also a group esuna (though probably a waste of gauge) and his HA has an esuna chase every four uses if you can somehow time that correctly...!

IX: 1/3: Zidane USB2

Not useless, but I really needed more IX BDL!

Got a dupe Armarant LMR. Well that was a waste of 5 mythril.

Got Garnet's lightning Sync. That's the first pull this season that really, REALLY, pleases me.

I don't know how reasonably she can be a chain holder and cast 2 different BDLs (the SB G+ helps), so if all else fails, she could even end up switching fully to damage duties.

Garnet just got hero gear and Kraken uses chain wataja on slot 4 and 5 so she has plenty of meter to juggle chain and her cap breaks.

VIII: 1/3: Ultimecia USB1

@_@

I attempted physical Kraken and got him just under 20% in my best run, but it feels like I don't have enough firepower. I was using Lightning / Fran / Prompto and my better run used Quina while I didn't get as far with Orran... basically these characters just don't do enough damage at this level without a crit fix, even with plenty of imperilling from Prompto and Fran. But Quina not being able to counter Aegis (Blessing of the Deep) is a weakness, plus s/he doesn't add much healing the way Orran does. So I guess I'm hoping to get Kain's dual awakening in the fest? Or if not, then throw tickets at the refreshed FF1 banner hoping for Master's sync...